New-look London vote will cost more to run, take longer to count

Londoners will pay more and wait longer for voting results in the fall civic election, the cost of becoming Canada’s first city to switch to ranked-ballot voting.

For the first time in modern history, voters may even wake up the morning after election day without knowing whom they’ve elected.

“It can be a bit of a shock,” political scientist Zachary Spicer, who specializes in civic government, said of the change coming under ranked-ballot voting.

But Spicer said most people likely aren’t staying awake waiting for election-night results, and the higher cost of running an election under the new system comes with the turf.

“When we think about elections in the 1870s and 1880s, people would go weeks without knowing. Obviously, we don’t go by the same standards nowadays . . . (but) I don’t think it’s a huge inconvenience to go to sleep not knowing who the mayor might be,” he said.

And the cost?

“Democracy costs money, no two ways about it,” said Spicer, of the University of Toronto’s Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance.

London is blazing a trail as the first city to scrap traditional first-past-the-post voting in favour of ranked ballots, touted by some as a more democratic system.

The technology to run the election more than doubles in price compared to the 2014 showdown, thanks to both a growing population and the new ranked ballot system.

New provincial rules gave Ontario municipalities the option to try ranked-ballot voting starting with the 2018 civic elections.

Ranked ballots, a form of preferential voting in which the winner must have at least 50 per cent of the vote, is gaining traction in the United States and is also used by political parties in Canada to choose their leaders. Critics, however, slam the system as confusing for voters.

London staff are holding a candidate information session on the new system April 7 at city hall — and are offering to speak to citizen groups about the switch to ranked ballots.

City clerk Cathy Saunders, the city’s election boss, said she expects the first round of ranked-ballot voting — the candidate who wins the most first-place votes — to be announced before midnight. But in races where more rounds are required, don’t expect results until the middle of the next day, Oct. 23.

“Waiting for a few extra hours isn’t usually an issue, and doesn’t affect the actual speed of transition to new leadership,” said Sameer Vasta, a member of the Urban League of London.

The umbrella group for neighbourhood associations is holding a mock election to introduce voters to ranked ballots on Feb. 22.

Part of the election-night slowdown under ranked balloting is that leaders can’t be announced as results come in from individual polling stations. All the ballots must be counted to determine which candidate won the most first-place votes.

If no one gets at least half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes falls off the ballot. The second choices on those ballots are redistributed to candidates still in the running.

The process repeats until one candidate wins more than 50 per cent.

“Being a second or a third choice on a ballot can make a real difference,” Saunders said. “You might not be their first choice, but their second choice could help you win.”

Advocates like Vasta say ranked ballots decrease strategic voting — there’s no worry about a candidate splitting the vote — and encourage a more civil race. Candidates won’t want to alienate voters outside their main pool of support because of the importance of those second- and third-choice rankings.

But ranked ballots may cause delays at polling stations, where it’s expected it will take voters longer to fill out their ballots — and continue back at city hall, where Saunders will review manually the results of each round after the numbers are crunched by computer software.

That program will cost the city about $12,000.

All the technology for the election will cost the city about $490,000, more than double the $244,000 spent in 2014. That includes an extra $41,000 for larger ranked ballots — there are more names to fit on the ticket.

Some of the increased cost is due to the need to buy more equipment for a growing population of voters. The goal is to reduce lines at polling stations by having more voting locations.

Coun. Josh Morgan, who supports ranked ballots, calls that extra cost “justified and very strategic," given the potential for longer wait times with ranked-ballot voting.

But Coun. Phil Squire, who voted against dumping first-past-the-post, is less impressed.

“I think we invited this. The first person to do anything — whether you’re buying a big-screen TV or whatever — pays the high cost,” he said, calling the decision to move ahead with ranked ballots “stubborn.”

Others say London is leading the way toward a more fair and balanced system.

Dave Meslin, a member of Unlock Democracy, an organization focused on proportional representation, said the cost should be negligible over the long term.

“There will be one-time additional costs related to education and software upgrades, but it really shouldn’t be a huge increase. My guess is that the short-term increase will be no more than $3 or $4 per voter, so I guess the question for those voters is: How much is democracy worth to you?”

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